Great trip - NCL Pearl to Alaska 9/16-22, 2013

[Sherrica]

First I want to say thank you to all of the great people on Cruise Critic who post their tips, tricks and experiences. You have really helped me make the most of my time at Sea! It really helped me a lot to have a heads up about things so that I knew to watch for them.

This was our second cruise and first time in Alaska (the first was Dec 2011 NCL Pride of America).

We are from Vancouver, Washington (just North of Portland, OR). Pre-cruise we stayed at Sutton Suites in SeaTac. This was a sleep-park-cruise package (sleep one night and park for the duration of the cruise). If anybody wants more details about the place I’m happy to share, but I can’t recommend it due to some serious maintenance issues. We survived the night at Sutton and took their shuttle to the pier at 10am, gave our luggage to a porter and we got right through to check in with no waiting.

Day 1 – Sunday, Embarkation: We were on board by 11:30am and took a few minutes to look around the ship before the Summer Palace opened at noon (until 2pm). The Summer Palace was a bit more challenging to get to, (Deck 7, Aft, then down the stairs) so we didn’t go there as often. Hubby had a cheeseburger and I had the shrimp & salmon sandwich. Rooms were ready by 1:05pm and we went up to find our cabin (9590, a mid-ship balcony) and rest a bit. Our luggage was waiting for us when we got back from the

Muster drill.

 

That evening we ate at Indigo and both had the Surf & Turf (steak & lobster). We found ourselves eating at Indigo most of the time because we really liked the atmosphere and the décor there. Plus, it was easy to get to.

The Casino At Sea had a Rum Punch Party from 7:30 to 8:30pm which kicked off the opening of CAS.

Hubby loves to wear kilts and packed a whopping FOUR for the cruise! Somehow I managed to get him to condense his luggage a bit as he started out with more than I did! Throughout the cruise we got a lot of interesting comments and I tried to remember to write them down. Kilt Comment of the Day for day 1 was from a woman from Italy who asked him “Are you with the company?” We had no idea what that meant, so had to ask for more details. She said that men with the dance company in Italy wear kilts and added that they often have nicer legs than the ladies. Hubby said “but my legs are hairy” she said “So are mine – I’m Italian”. It was pretty cute.

That evening we attended the “Experience Stardust” preview variety show and went to sleep pretty early.

 

Day 2 – Monday, Sea Day: We got to the buffet a little late (10:15am) and I was thinking – why are there so many people here? Didn’t they eat early? I guess I’m not the only late sleeper who was on the ship! The buffet was so full we couldn’t find a spot to sit, so we ate in the Kids Café area. The buffet food was good, but it was often difficult to navigate through all of the chairs and find a space to sit. It would help if the chairs were a little smaller, or if people would be willing to push them in when they leave the table.

It was a nice morning and we had the Cruise Critic Meet & Greet to go to at 11am, so we went outside to look at the water for a bit and saw some whales! We were pretty excited about our first sighting. It was great meeting all of the cruise critic members and we had a fun gift exchange. Thanks so much to Musicorn for setting it all up! The crew came in to greet us and somehow I didn’t manage to take a photo!

Next was the latitudes party (our first) in the Spinnaker Lounge. There were drinks, snacks, entertainment and then some door prizes. We didn’t win anything, but it was fun.

That night we ate at Moderno (Churrascaria). The food was good, but we aren’t used to eating large quantities of meat, so we got full fast! If you start getting full, ask them to bring the Picanha next. They aren’t going to let you leave without trying it!

This was the first Dress up or Not night and after dinner we got our picture taken with several of the backgrounds they had set up in the Crystal Atrium.

Later that night we went to the Spinnaker Lounge for the Norwegian’s Night Out party. They had prizes throughout the night and one of them was for “Best Dressed”. Hubby had his kilt on (of course), so I told him to get out there. He won a Pina Colada.

I have to say I love the snack mix they (sometimes) give you in the lounges (nuts mixed with rice crackers). It’s super tasty. Also, NCL gets extra points for having both Strongbow and Angry Orchard hard apple cider. I love cider and wasn’t sure if they had it on board since I had not read anything about it before.

We came back to the room to find an adorable frog towel animal made for us by our Steward.

 

Kilt comment of the day: A woman came up to hubby and said “Mind if I check”, then ran off.

 

Day 3 – Tuesday, Juneau: We enjoyed room service with fresh fruit, danish, yogurt, cereal and coffee. Every day that we didn’t get room service for breakfast I was wishing that we had.

 

 

I know it’s a limited menu, but that is great for anybody who is trying to be on a diet! Also, hubby gets hungry early in the morning and I am traditionally not the fastest at getting ready, so it works well for us to get room service and then go get “second breakfast” from the buffet if we’re hungry again later.

This day I got up early because I wanted to attend Arts & Crafts! Hubby thought I was crazy for getting up so early (it started at 9am), but I really wanted to see what was offered. We got started a little late because a bunch of whales (maybe 10 to 15) were outside and we had a wonderful view from the windows in Moderno. Once we got back on track, everyone was given a packet of stickers and supplies to decorate your own journal. I had missed Arts & Crafts the day before, but a lady I met told me they made greeting cards.

Afterwards hubby and I went up to the buffet for a snack (aka Second Breakfast) and then I attended the Slot Tournament at 10:30. I didn’t realize that there were so many rounds. At the end of the rounds I was in 8th place. The top 8 people at the end of the week would complete again for the prize. While I made it through the first day, I got knocked off on Thursday. Oh well, it was fun.

We ate lunch in the Summer Palace and a short while later we arrived in Juneau.

Our Juneau excursion was the “Photo Safari by Land and Sea”. This was really a lot of fun and I don’t think the description did it justice. First they pick you up and take you to a boat designed specifically for photography. There were only 14 guests and 2 crew on our boat. The boat sits low to the water and has windows that open in so that you can take pictures without getting rained on. It gave us a great view of the whales. We saw eagles, Humpback Whales, Orcas and a Sea Lion. It was really neat. I can’t count how many whales we saw and they seemed so close. Hubby had his fancy camera (he’s the photographer of the family) and I was pretty much just along for the ride, but I managed to get a few shots. I think we spent almost 3 hours on the water (including the ride to and from the site). This was Captain Jeff’s last tour of the season and everyone was really excited to see the Orcas, so I think we spent a little extra time there. I wish I had asked Captain Jeff and our guide Hugh for a photo on board the boat, but I didn’t think of it until it was too late.

 

Next we took a short bus ride to Mendenhall Glacier. We had a bit of a nature hike along the way (I had my knee brace and a walking stick, so I survived). By the time we reached the glacier the sun was going down. We did get lucky though and it didn’t rain. We saw something very cool that our guide Hugh said he had never seen before – an eagle perched on an iceberg. Once hubby goes through his photos I’ll try to post that. His turned out a lot better than mine did.

Incidentally, our bus driver Kellie is a local celebrity – she was on Season 1 of the TV show “Naked and Afraid”.

This was a really fun excursion and well worth the money.

Some folks asked to be let off the bus at the Roberts Tram so that they could go shopping, but we were tired, so we just went back to the ship and had dinner.

This was the night we would have had to wait to get into Indigo (it was about 8pm by the time we got there), so we went to Summer Palace instead. I had the salmon and I think that may be my favorite meal of the cruise. Hubby had the special (Cod) and afterwards we went to “The Heath Show” to see the comedian. He was really funny and we enjoyed that a lot. We came back to the room to find a cute bunny towel animal!

Kilt Comment of the Day: While waiting for the elevator a husband asked his wife “Does that remind you of your ex boyfriend”? She said yes and hubby asked “Was he Scottish?” The husband said “Yes, she’s from Northern England”.

[Sherrica]

Some pics from the Photo safari excursion:

 

Humpback tails

 

 

Orcas

 

 

More Orcas

 

 

Eagle

 

 

Stream on the way to Mendenhall

 

 

Hubby at Mendenhall Glacier

 

[brunolvr]

Great review so far! Can't wait to read more! You're more organized than I am! I plan on writing a review.

 

And thanks for sharing your beautiful pictures!!!:)

[Sherrica]

Day 4 – Wednesday, Skagway: We had an early morning arrival at Skagway. Again we had room service and then left the ship at about 10am. We shopped a bit since there were big end-of-season sales going on and then stopped for lunch at the Red Onion Saloon. After that we went back to the ship to drop off our bags and then headed back out to catch the train for the 12:45 tour on the White Pass Railroad. I had purchased some post cards, so I wrote those out on the train. It rained pretty hard during the morning, but luckily it cleared up a bit during our train ride and we were able to take pictures through the windows. We got lucky and we sat in the section with the tour guide. He was a lot of fun. This was a nice, casual, low key tour. It would have been nicer if the sun was shining, but there isn’t much we can do about that.

 

After the tour we walked around Skagway a bit more and found the post office so I could mail my post cards (it’s on the corner of 6th). We shopped a little more and then made our way back to the ship.

They needed a photographer:

 

We attended the Folkloric show at 6pm. I thought this was going to be some sort of cultural dancing event, but it was Alaskan singer Steve Hites entertaining us with songs and stories about Alaska. It was pretty neat and even hubby enjoyed it.

We ate at Indigo again and then got ready to see the Second City. There were times when I didn’t know what was going on during their performance, but other bits were very entertaining. I loved the office chair ballet and thought it was brilliant.

Later we attended the White Hot Party which started off with a “Thriller” flash mob (there were lessons earlier in the week). We didn’t dance, but enjoyed people-watching. Our towel animal today was a cute little dog.

 

Bunny Towel Animal

 

 

Dog Towel Animal

 

[Sherrica]

Great review so far! Can't wait to read more! You're more organized than I am! I plan on writing a review.

 

And thanks for sharing your beautiful pictures!!!:)

 

Thank you Sandy! I LOVE seeing all of your pictures, so I had to find a few to share :).

[Sherrica]

Day 5 – Thursday, Glacier Bay: We didn’t order room service and we should have! We were already seeing glaciers the time we made it to breakfast. Again there was no place to sit indoors, but we found a spot in the Great Outdoors area. We were lucky with the weather again and it was overcast, but wasn’t really raining.

We had coffee drinks delivered to our room at 11am and enjoyed them on our balcony. I had the Snow Plow and hubby had the Grizzly Bear. Both were good, but mine was a little sweet.

 

 

*Note: the one we discovered that we didn’t know before the cruise is that there IS a tie back for the balcony curtain! We didn’t discover it until the last day though. Our balcony door was pretty heavy and didn’t move easily, so there wouldn’t be any need for a bungee cord to hold it open in case anybody is wondering.

Sailing through Glacier Bay was quite an experience. The ranger did a great job on the narration of the scenery and it was a really calm and peaceful visit to one of the most amazing sites in the world.

 

We ate lunch in the buffet and then attended “Wine Lovers – The Musical” in the afternoon. This was a wine tasting (6 wines) mixed with musical theater. Hubby and I both enjoyed it. It was in the Spinnaker lounge and was followed by Bingo. I had some free bingo cards that I got from signing up for the art auction (before I realized it was held at the same time as the Latitudes party, so I wasn’t able to attend). I also had a card from purchasing a set of pull tabs the night before. *Note: I got the pull tabs three times and only had a 10% return on them. I was not very lucky . I did purchase the basic Bingo Card set, but I didn’t win.

 

Again we ate in Indigo (we both had the special, salmon in cream sauce) and then went back to the room to rest a bit. We were excited to find a plate of chocolate treats sent to us by the Chief Financial Accountant whom we had met earlier at Indigo.

While we were resting in the room, the captain came on the speaker and warned us we might not be able to dock at Ketchikan the next day. The seas were rough (60 knot winds) and several ships had canceled their visit on Thursday.

Later that evening we attended the “Comedy Magic of Chip Romero”. The ship was really rocking, but we enjoyed the show. We came back to find an invitation to dine with the officers the next day. Earlier in the week I had signed up to potentially be chosen and we were pleased to have the opportunity.

 

That night our Steward left us a Polar Bear!

Edited October 1, 2013 by Sherrica
double post!

[Sherrica]

Day 6 – Friday, Ketchikan (Sea Day): We were scheduled to arrive in Ketchikan at 6am and our “Eagles, Totems & Lighthouses” tour was supposed to start at 9:30, so we had room service delivered at 6:30. Hubby asked the delivery person if we were going to make it to Ketchikan and he said no, so I went back to sleep for three more hours!

 

At some point our Cruise Director, Pedro, came on the speaker and announced that they would add more activities to fill in for the time we were missing in Ketchikan. I sent hubby down to pick up the list and some of the things they added were: Zumba Dance Class, Arts & Crafts (but I slept through it), Minute Mystery, Trivia, a Scavenger Hunt, The Great Gatsby Movie, What’s My Line Game show, Checkers Challenge, Bridge, Chess, a Pastry Demonstration, $10 Budget Bingo, Chinese Whispers Trivia and Towel Animal Folding Demonstration. I was impressed by how quickly they were able to add additional activities.

 

We ate lunch in the Summer Palace and later that afternoon attended the Crew Talent Show.

 

I have to mention that because the sea was rough and we had an extra “sea day”, the casino air quality was very poor. Just walking through after exiting the Stardust Theater I had to cover my face so I could breathe. If there’s anything NCL could do to bring in more fresh air in there I would be much more likely to hang out in the Casino. It was so smoky there was no way I could be there that day. I’m sensitive to smoke and it was overwhelming. Another note about the casino: they do have late night snacks, but I wish they had the pretzel rolls! Wouldn’t it be easy to bring whatever was leftover from the buffet down to the casino? I think if word got out that there were pretzel rolls in the casino from 11pm to 1am there might be a spike in visits!

 

That afternoon hubby went to the Beer Tasting before dinner while I got ready and then went down to the lobby to pick up our luggage tags. I got the latest tags I could get (Dark Blue: 9:30am) so that we would be able to enjoy a nice breakfast on our last morning on the ship.

 

We were asked to meet at the Maltings Bar near Indigo at 5:20 to go to dinner with the officers. We were invited to dine with the Shore Excursions Manager, Gregory Smuts and were seated with six other guests (four of whom we had previously met at our Cruise Critic Meet & Greet) and two other officers, Charlin who handles the port clearance for everyone and Julius who is in charge of House Keeping.

 

We had a very nice dinner and afterwards we went to see “Encore!”. This was my favorite production show. It featured songs from six different Broadway plays. All of the performers did a great job and I enjoyed the show a lot. Afterwards members of the crew came on stage to say an early goodbye.

 

Our towel animal that night was an adorable crab!

 

Day 7 – Saturday, Victoria, Canada: Again we slept late and ate breakfast at the Buffet. This was the day of the raffle drawing for the free cruise during Bingo. We did not win L. Afterwards we went back to the Buffet to enjoy the Bavarian Fest (all sorts of German food served in the Great Outdoors area). We had to pack, so we went back to work on that and then the Captain announced he was offering free drinks in all of the bars and lounges from 2 to 3pm, so we had to take advantage of that. We came back to find the most inventive “towel animal” yet – our Steward used the bed cover to make a Lobster!

 

We had planned to have an early afternoon snack and then eat dinner in Port, but I saw that the special for the night was Pecan Crusted Alaskan Salmon, so I convinced Hubby that we had to go to dinner early! Summer Palace opened early this day, so we got there at 4:30pm and were seated right away. The Salmon was delicious.

 

 

We took a cab from the pier to downtown Victoria to “Irish Times”, a local pub. We were supposed to meet a friend there, but she had an emergency and couldn’t make it, so we had a drink and a snack and then walked along the waterfront and hubby took some nighttime photos. We caught another cab back to the ship, packed the last of our luggage and set it outside the door. We ended up going to sleep pretty early.

 

Day 8 – Sunday, Disembarkation: We got up fairly early and went to breakfast at Summer Palace. It’s pretty much the same food you can get in the Buffet, but it’s so much more comfortable to have the server find you a place to sit, bring you the food and take it away when you’re done. The whole Buffet experience always felt so rushed and crowded. Afterwards we went up to the Crystal Atrium to wait for our color tags to be called and we were off the ship by 9:30.

 

We really enjoyed our cruise a lot and can’t wait to go on another. Overall I found the crew to be friendly, kind and attentive, the food to be delicious and plentiful and the activities to be numerous! Our room Steward, Moiges, took great care of us. He was like a cleaning Ninja! We usually saw him at least twice a day and any time we left our room for any length of time we’d come back to everything in perfect order. It was a great experience.

 

I almost forgot to post the pic of our chocolate treats!

 

[brunolvr]

Great review! and I loved your pictures!:) So glad to hear you enjoyed your cruise.

[Hikini]

Fun to see your pictures and hear of your trip. It was nice to meet you - hope our paths cross on another cruise someday!

[nikibee]

Great review! It was such a fun time. And it was nice to meet you guys!

(yes I finally signed up on here---I'm brunolvr's daughter!)

[kahtrav]

Very good review - thanks. I just booked the Pearl for early June, so am looking around (we've done a late season - last HAL ship of season and a June Marine Highway ferry) for using our odd port times well (we'll have 2 children so the interest is a bit different). Great to get some input on meals, too - we may skip buffets if they are that crazy - use the dining rooms more. Anyway, thanks.

[arosey]

Planning a trip to Alaska May 2015. Questions about cabin.. Is 9590 a good cabin for first time cruiser with possible motion sickness? Is is a quiet cabin with no noise from children or elevators? I heard you have to watch the side with the survival boats, which side is that? Thanks

arosey

[Sherrica]

Thanks everyone ;)

arosey, it was a good cabin. We could not see the life boats from the balcony as I recall. I could not hear elevators, but they were close by and that was convenient. I can't guarantee your neighbors won't have kids, but we didn't have a lot of noise in our room, just a guy who coughed constantly next door, but that was it.

 

You will have a great time!